A pallet is a flat transport structure used to keep products in a stable state when being loaded, unloaded or moved from one place to another either by use of a forklift, pallet jack, front loader or other similar device. Since the first U.S. patent related to a pallet function was filed in 1924, pallets have been proved to be a most useful and convenient structure in modern supply chain system for handling, storage and shipping a myriad of different products worldwide.
Schrage (U.S. Pat. No. 5,337,681) pointed out at least five shortcomings of incorporating pallet application: such as difficulty to collect, sanitary problems, safety, heavy weight and inconvenience in securing of the stacked goods to the pallets by typically using wrapping sheet of the stretch film or binds.
The use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag(s) on pallets has been recently used in the retail industry. One such retailer is the world-wide retail giant Wal-Mart. Other entity that has incorporated RFID tags in a large scale is the United States Department of Defense (DOD). Some other companies have attempted to add a prewritten or pre-coded RFID tag to help buyers to know what types of products are bound on each pallet and to improve their inventory control. However these types of pallets with RFID tags have not being widely used in today's supply chain and logistics management.